Re: “Former employees speak out on Global College” (Feb. 23, page 7)

I spent more than two hours in two telephone conversations giving information and contact names to your reporter prior to her completion of her article. Nevertheless, The Uniter chose to do the following:

- run an inaccurate headline referring to “employees” you quoted only oneformer employee - a part-time undergrad student assistant who left under mutually disappointing and unsatisfactory conditions, after several warnings about his inadequate performance;

- write and publish the story during Reading Week when current or past student employees were unavailable, even though I asked your reporter to please wait for just a week when other perspectives could be included in her story to provide some balance;

- not contact any other professors who were past or current directors of Global College Institutes; instead you ran a story in February 2012 quoting only one former director based on his opinion regarding Global College staffing back in 2010 - Prof. Kim Sibanda resigned as a Global College Institute director in the summer of 2010 when he took on considerable additional duties as a department chair;

- ignore all the information I gave your reporter regarding the realities of having to staff and manage Global College when budgetary restraint “freezes” vacant staff positions, leaving the option of hiring for short terms of three months or less, thereby making “turnover” inevitable if we are to fulfil our mandate;

- run an article on Global College in contravention of your own published by-law principle: “Contributors to The Uniter should strive to provide fair, balanced and accurate information, as well as to equip themselves with evidence to support their published statements;”

I appreciate this opportunity to write in response to your article; how much better it would have been if your reporter had been able to write a fair, balanced piece.

May I remind you of The Uniter’s ethical principle: “Staff should rectify in print, at the first available opportunity, all mistakes, culpable and/or otherwise.”

Principal Marilou McPhedran
The University of Winnipeg Global College

– Principal Marilou McPhedran The University of Winnipeg Global College

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